Unspoken, Unmeasured, Undeniable: The Lived Experiences of Women in Data & AI and Our Hope for Designing a Better Future

→ Read the full report

Last June, more than 60 women in data and AI gathered in Toronto as part of the Toronto Machine Learning Summit, not to network, but to do harder work: to name the barriers they actually face, document them honestly, and map what needs to change.

Nine months later, that work is published.

Unspoken, Unmeasured, Undeniable is a collaborative white paper written by the women in that room,  practitioners, researchers, and leaders from across industries and career stages. It is grounded in research. It is even more grounded in lived experience.

What’s Inside

The white paper covers four interconnected challenges facing women in data and AI today:

• The contradictory expectations placed on women in technical roles, by others, and by themselves
• The workplace dynamics that shape whose ideas get heard, whose contributions get credited, and whose career stalls
• The structural barriers preventing women from reaching senior leadership in Canadian AI
• The ways AI systems encode gender bias, and the governance gaps that allow it to persist

These challenges don’t exist in isolation. They compound across career stages, industries, and identities, and they share a common root. The systems themselves need to change.

Who It’s For

If you are a woman navigating these challenges yourself, your experiences are in this report. You are not alone.

If you are an ally, a leader, or an organization with the power to act, this report has something for you too: recommendations at the individual, collective, and organizational levels.

→ Read the full report

Prepared by the TMLS Women in AI Committee with community partnership from Northeastern University Toronto.

To the women whose voices live in these pages, thank you.

Committee Co-chairs: Helena Yu, Farzaneh Ghods

Contributing Authors: Asal Setayeshnia, Mahsa Panahi, Erum Razvi, Isabel Constantino, Sarah Sun, Kimberly Eltanal, Anshika Khandelwal, Paras Jamil, Malikeh Ehghaghi, Andrea Ruotolo

Discussion Facilitators: Vinothini Sangaralingam, Silvana Ortega Sierra, Alina Rivilis, Sarah Sun, Bita Houshmand, Malikeh Ehghaghi, Andrea Ruotolo

Background Research: Andrea Ruotolo, Malikeh Ehghaghi, Noureen Syed, Zahra Kharal, Mahsa Panahi

TMLS Team: Tina Aprile, Ana Monnard

Northeastern University Toronto: Charmaine Ramirez